This only logically applies if you give western media a free unbias pass to determine the tone when discussing political systems in the west.
Imho no. But it reveals a bias on my part. Lets say I see/hear an argument where I think to myself - ok you could voice criticism (of lets say the government) here, but maybe hint at it, or indicate it between the lines, because it is not essential to the main argument at hand.
And I see RT 'punching through always', and building this narrative of 'everything is broken' - I recognize that. Almost no nuance. Almost no weighing of arguments, whenever they see a chance to get to the punchline of 'some system is rotten or broken'.
So the argument I'm making is actually one about methods/style. Thats also why I mentioned The rising, because it has a similar approach.
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Apart from that two other aspects that I find important:
First:
RT for a long time had a practice of using beautiful women anchors or reporters mixed with 'conspiracy positive' (not addressing any conspiracy in particular, but having sign off phrases like 'keep vigilant', or 'these are the facts you will only see here') attitudes, which was something really not seen as much in the west before, they had a strange kind of appeal, that they constructed several formats on, if I remember correctly. The worst example of that I remember was a report on the european migrant crisis (at its peak) where they sent in an actual model to then do a report on how 'most of those migrants weren't what they'd appear to be', and that the convetional narrative was lying, ..
The woman felt so obviously out of place, not that bright and reading a script, that I actually shuddered.
And this was an actual practice they stuck to for quite some time (see:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-26585033 )
Second:
For most people on most topics (maybe not shortly before your country goes into war, or foreign policy topics, or on complicated domestic topics), it actually is more beneficial to hear a 'tone of a western media outlet discussing western politics' in their own country - compared to 'always' getting a provocative angle.
Still keep watching those provocative outlets as well, by all means (thats what I do - just in another political field..
), but also at least read or watch a proper mainstream outlet in your country as well. On most topics they actually are trying to report in the interest of the population (thats the thing of 'I'd see no reason to turn to RT on stuff like figures reporting on the Covid crisis') and as a result you arent only getting interpretations where you need someone thats deep into policy discussion to see what angle you might be coming from. So in short - more socially acceptable. Knowing only the edge stuff and nothing about how most people in society will see it for most people will bring more problems, than positives.
(In germany just yesterday 10.000 of them were on the street (protesting against masks) shouting, 'go home media' and 'lying media', more than giving actual arguments.
No one media outlet will give you 'the actual truth'. (NYT at least a few years ago was best at spanning a very broad amount of topics, rather in depth, The Economist, and Financial Times always had in depth reporting on topics, the Nation, the Atlantic and Vanity Fair, had maybe the best 'Commentating' in the US, for a while (thats over as of now..
) -- but none of them or any other outlet is free of any bias. Never was.)
Also - it helps to differenciate between reporting and 'punditry' (someone 'commentating' on 'the news'). If you need somone to tell you 'how to interpret most of what you are reading in reporting' thats still not ideal.